July 4, 2012: Panel 7F - The Economics of Ecosystem ServicesCopyright (c) 2015 University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law All rights reserved.http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/gelc/2012/july4_7F
Recent Events in July 4, 2012: Panel 7F - The Economics of Ecosystem Servicesen-usFri, 23 Jan 2015 17:25:19 PST3600The Economics of Ecosystem Services Videohttp://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/gelc/2012/july4_7F/5
http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/gelc/2012/july4_7F/5Wed, 04 Jul 2012 13:15:00 PDTPayment for Ecosystem Services in Brazil: Between Efficiency and Equityhttp://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/gelc/2012/july4_7F/4
http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/gelc/2012/july4_7F/4Wed, 04 Jul 2012 13:15:00 PDT
Brazil is characterized by a great richness of its biodiversity, the extension of its continental lands, a variety of economic and cultural condition on its different regions and a sociocultural diversity. All aspects contribute to the complexity of the environmental issue. Although such complexity deserves a special attention, the history of socio-environmental and economic public policies prove that such policies have not always accomplished good results, be it either because models of intense exploitation of natural resources have been adopted, disregarding biodiversity; or due to a poor view of regions as areas either to be occupied or preserved, disregarding its cultural diversity; or even due to the lack of articulation between socio-environmental and economic policies adopted with opposing solutions to reach development.

In search of an ideal sustainable development, some alternatives are on discussion. The matter of effectiveness of environmental policies and the imperative to create mechanisms that stimulate social and economic agents to behave towards the increase on environmental protection are fundamental aspects for Law investigations.

Payment for ecosystem services has been presented as one of these alternatives. When it came to the importance for human welfare, these services, not so long ago, were neither considered by Economy nor foreseen, implicitly or explicitly, by Law.

Thus, the concept of ecosystem services and, more precisely, of biodiversity conservation, is related to the concept of positive externality, as well as pollution has been regarded as a negative externality. Therefore, recognizing the importance of ecosystem services, by means of their valuation and remuneration, means internalization of positive externalities.

Despite the potential of remuneration for such services, the idea of applying a financial-economic value to the environment alludes to the difficulty to insert new principles that go against market logics. As for Brazil, specifically, a bigger difficulty can be observed, when it comes to the need for respect towards the viewpoint that most indigenous and non-indigenous peoples have, in relation to the place where they live.

Furthermore, environmental problems present peculiarities that may not always be efficiently solved. Their action is limited by the following topics: the vastness of ecological problems and their effect on the basis of social reproduction; the social and cultural character of ecological crisis; the unprecedented and irreversible character of ecological experiments. Thus, the payment for ecosystem services implies, besides ecological aspects, debates and options strongly related to equity and social aspects.

Therefore, it is observed that these benefits will not derive automatically from payment transactions, which may evolve into a market dominated by great buyers and providers. They depend, in that manner, on the regulation that may be established, which is determining to define the agents who will have access to them and to incentive the insertion of the referred communities. These paper aims to analyze some programs of payment for ecosystem services implemented in Brazilian states, as well as Federal Law Projects and whether they seem able to fulfill equity goals.

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Ana Maria Nusdeo et al.Critical Analysis of the Contractual Commitment to Serve the Protection of Ecological Services: Payments for Environmental Serviceshttp://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/gelc/2012/july4_7F/3
http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/gelc/2012/july4_7F/3Wed, 04 Jul 2012 13:15:00 PDT
The contractual commitment is a tool now widely used in the environmental field. As part of payments for environmental services, this contractual obligation, however, raises many questions. These cover not only the legitimacy but also contractors and so intimately linked to the object of the contract, environmental services. Indeed, the provision of environmental services justifies financial rewards in return. Insofar as this concept of environmental services is uncertain because of a missing definition, it coexists with that of ecosystem services, environmental public goods, the subject of the contract and therefore its payment may appear questionable. Including the assumption that this problem is solvable, the legitimacy of contractors is also cause questions. Indeed, who is the payee ? Tha landowner or the land user ? This question involved here is the dimension of equitable participation in natural resource management on farmland. It also refers here directly to the nature of service rendered to qualify for this compensation. In addition, should the contractor who pays for a service ensure that the contract has been respected ?

Can it be a payment involving a certain property which was the subject of contractual exchange ? Its legitimacy is also an irritant and often subject to doctrinal differences. So, is a private person entitled to intervene, especially to identify environmental services likely to object to a fee ? Implicitly, the question of the monetary value of these services arises. What contractors is the value determined by? Unequal power relations may arise during contract negotiations. Therefore, to support opportunities for transactions to pay for environmental services, seems to compel the existence of a form of regulation. What might be the scale of action to take? By what authority? Would it necessarily be a legal regulation? Moreover, beyond "the proper functioning legal" logic of this contract, the same transposition of this legal architecture to any transaction intended to pay for environmental services also causes difficulties. Is this construction admissible to the contractors? Indeed, this generalization and / or pervasiveness of the contractual tool invites reflection on legal thought and to think of the standard.

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Alexandra LanglaisCounting Nature and the Nature of Countinghttp://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/gelc/2012/july4_7F/1
http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/gelc/2012/july4_7F/1Wed, 04 Jul 2012 13:15:00 PDT
Biodiversity protection is becoming increasingly reliant on metrics, lists, and indicators. Check the box approaches to taking biodiversity into account attempt to reduce complex concepts, and contested science, into simple standards, often translated into numerical representation. The acronyms alone associated with such attempts to numerically account for and prioritize nature are mind boggling even for the initiated: are habitats IBAs (Important Bird Areas), IPAs (Indigenous Protected Areas), AZE (Alliance for Zero Extinction) sites, KBAs (Key Biodiversity Areas)? List-based approaches dominate both international treaties (the World Heritage Convention, the Ramsar Convention, CITES) and leading international instruments such as the IUCN Red List. The development of mechanisms for accounting for forest carbon and the conservation and sustainable management of forests will be critical to the success of REDD+ initiatives.

To date, biodiversity indicators and critical habitat categories have been the subject of debate among environmental economists and conservation biologists. Legal scholarship has been largely silent on the implications of this accounting for nature. International environmental law has tended to entrench the assumptions underlying these quantitative tools, rather than to expose the ways in which quantification contributes to limited types of knowledge.

This paper seeks to map international law’s growing attempts to count nature. In so doing, it exposes the ways in which lists and numbers obscure contested knowledge. Numbers and lists are becoming the bedrock of biodiversity law. Their very appeal lies in their seeming neutrality. But who is creating the metrics? Who is doing the counting? And how does the translation of biodiversity indicators into international law and policy targets transform the information in the original indicator?

Beyond simply mapping attempts to account for nature in international law, this paper’s central concern is with the potential for greater reflexivity in international law list-making. In what ways do international environmental law’s lists and metrics allow for learning and adjustments? Given the fast-changing pace of biodiversity science, how can we better ensure that international environmental law is capable of learning and of incorporating a dynamic approach to both counting nature and understanding the limits of counting?